It may be just a £5.95 paperback, but the publication of My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic (MNICSAIAAA) is in many ways a much bigger sensation in the art world than any number of rotting cow's heads. As the most influential collector of contemporary British art over the past two decades, Saatchi is notoriously reclusive. He hates being the centre of attention, looks pissed off and embarrassed if he is papped while out with his more media-friendly wife, Nigella, gives almost no interviews and, on the rare occasions he does, tries to get away with saying as little as possible. He doesn't even bother to attend the openings of exhibitions at his own gallery.

So a book covering art, advertising and Nigella – the closest thing to autobiography we are likely to get – comes as a genuine surprise. Especially when it comes with none of the PR spin that usually accompanies Saatchi's commercial activities. Publishing schedules are normally prepared a year in advance; Phaidon only announced this book a couple of months ago and there has been almost none of the pre-publicity, apart from newspaper serialisation, usually associated with a lead autumn title.

Then there's the book itself. The first surprise is the design. You'd expect something glossy and expensive, a tome worthy of the finest metropolitan coffee tables, its slender word count – even with a stylishly minimal page layout, MNICSAIAAA only clocks in at 164 pages – padded out with full-colour pictures of his more celebrated art. What we get is a functional paperback with a functional jacket that dispenses with any images.

It's the format that really confounds expectations, though. There is only a passing nod to narrative; instead, almost the entire book consists of a series of questions and answers, many of them totally unrelated to the one before. Saatchi says he's answering the questions he's been asked dozens of times before by would-be interviewers and never previously bothered to answer, but he doesn't explain why he's chosen to structure the book in this way.

While MNICSAIAAA does provide some fascinating insights into the Saatchi psyche, you can't help feeling that something important is being missed. Something that might be found, not by reading the book, but by deconstructing the way it is written. So – in the spirit of Charles himself – here goes.

Why have you written the book as Q &A?

To give poncy critics like you the opportunity to indulge in metatextual criticism; it's the kind of bollocks that's added millions to the value of my art collection and with any luck will do the same for the book. Look, it's dead simple. Why bother to go to the trouble of writing a coherent narrative when there's more value in creating the mystique of the naive?

But isn't it anything but naive?

Of course it is. It's quite cynical. I'm a very controlling man and I can't stand the idea of anyone knowing anything but the bare minimum about me. Limiting myself to a straight Q and A means I don't have to divulge anything I don't want to. It also means that I get to choose the questions as well as the answers and I'm certainly not going to mention the questions I've had that I have no intention of answering. Then you have no way of knowing just how many of these questions I've really been asked anyway. The most revealing bit of the whole book is when I say that "what makes my flesh crawl is reading about myself".

So why do it?

Because people have been pestering me for the past 20 years and will probably be pestering me for the next 20. This way I can get everyone off my back in one hit. It's also why I did it as a paperback; I'm not interested in making money out of this. The other big advantage of the Q and A format is I have now given quotes on every subject under the sun so no journalist or biographer need ever waste my time by phoning or emailing me again. They can just write what they want to write and feed in the quotes accordingly. All that anyone is ever going to get out of me is now in the public domain. I just want to be left alone. So please do.